A bibliometric analysis of collaboration in the field of information retrieval

Collaboration practices vary greatly per scientific area and discipline and influence the scientific performance and its scholarly communication. In this study, the collaborative pattern of;he Information Retrieval (IR) research field is analyzed using co-authored articles retrieved from Social Science Citation Index for a period of 11 years from 1987 to 1997. The level of collaboration, journal collaborative distribution, disciplinary collaborative distribution and country collaboration are probed according to IR collaborative research. Findings are discussed from the above perspectives in detail. In particular, this study reveals a perceptible upward trend of collaborative IR research with the results of these research efforts being reported in all major core IR journals. The inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary scholarly communications in collaborative researches are very much in evidence and cover broad areas like psychology, and computer and medical sciences, respectively. (C) 1998 Academic Press.